Work-based learning: Expansive learning, désoeuvrement, social justice and VET

Abstract

The paper raises important questions about the relationship between Vocational Education and Training (VET), work-based learning (WBL) and social justice. It adopts an analysis that moves beyond conceptualisations that validate WBL as an acknowledgement of the dignity of labour. It seeks to go beyond analyses that mobilise a conventional understanding of expansive learning. How then can we develop a broader understanding of WBL and VET? Such an understanding needs to acknowledge socio-economic contexts are marked by a fluidity and surplus labour and for many worklessness – what some have described as désoeuvrement. Labor can be an expression of our species being and can be found in unwaged work and the activities we engage in to express our humanity. Such labour is external to the oppressions and exploitation that are features of much waged labour. Is it then possible to conceive of an expansive notion of VET that goes beyond wage-based cultures of expansive learning towards a position that has embedded within it a commitment towards collective well-being, social justice and an understanding of the vocational that moves beyond a focus on waged labour and the interests of capital.